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STUDENT REVOLT – La Trobe University 1967 to 1973

I’m pleased to make my book, Student Revolt: La Trobe University 1967-73 available on-line as a pdf. The book was published in 1989, with comrades helping finance it. It was based on my Master of Arts thesis, completed at the University of Sydney in 1984. The book was published in 1989, when La Trobe University was commemorating the 25th anniversary of the passage of the La Trobe University Act. The University declined my offer to contribute a chapter to their official history of the University and, as I expected, the official history trivialised and down-played what bourgeois academics and administrators still refer to as “the troubles” on the campus. It was actually a full-fledged student rebellion, questioning the nature and purpose of the universities under capitalism, and part of a global movement of young people questioning the inherited wisdom that held back progress by keeping the system in place.

I wish that rebellious questioning spirit would return to the campuses, which strike me as too bogged down by group-think and uncritical thinking in the Arts faculties. Yes, a generalisation but one borne out by what I read and experience – and confirmed by efforts to shut down research that does not fit the dominant paradigm and to censor ideas deemed offensive. I continue to embrace the motto “It is right to rebel!” – offensive though it may be to the professors, popes and princes.